Max froze. The Beast hissed. “What?”
“Weren’t you briefed? Aw, fuck,” Lee said, stamping his foot and shoving his hands into the jacket side pockets. “They set me up. They didn’t want to tell you themselves, so they put me up to do it. Goddamn, I hate when they do that shit.”
“I’m not a guard.”
“Yeah, I noticed. But you’re all they have left.” He stopped in front of Max. “The FBI’s being a bitch over the World Trade Center thing, and the Russian mob’s acting like they know how to fix and launch the missiles they stole. The President’s in town for an international summit, so there go the best of the locals. The NSA is going through an identity crisis trying to find a new Great Satan, so it’s best not to attract their attention right now. The best security team available is a couple of freelancers in town catching Broadway shows, and the pick of third-world embassy guards.”
“You do it.”
“With my schedule? You see I’m working as a runner. The regular guy got popped. All we found in his car were a pair of eyes and a heart on the front seat. And a shitload of blood. Figured the organs and blood belonged to him, since that kind of action isn’t in his profile. Just what we need in the middle of all this: a goddamn human sacrifice.” Lee glanced at the trunk and waved exhaust fumes away. “I have another handoff tonight, then an Air Force flight out of Plattsburgh. Got an insertion into Bosnia, though I’m not sure if I’m supposed to bury bodies or dig them up.”
Max watched a dented delivery van go by on the other side of the Grand Concourse. “I’m not babysitting meat,” he said, trying to catch telltale antennae sticking out from the undercarriage.
“Yeah, well, I’m not the one to talk to. Come on, let’s dump the shit in the trunk and get going.” Lee headed for the passenger side of the Town Car. “Hey, I don’t mean to get personal, but is this guy the girl’s boyfriend, or are you, like, switch-hitting these days? Should I worry about turning my back on you?” Lee’s smirk showed teeth like thorns, sharp enough to pierce.
Max closed his eyes. The Beast rose to challenge Lee’s taunt, but Max assuaged its rage with memories of work performed with the operative in the hidden arenas of Southeast Asia, South America, Eastern Europe during the Warsaw Pact days. Blood spatter and screams filled his head. The Beast remembered, growled, slinked back to its nest of pain.
Max sympathized with the Beast’s caution. He preferred working alone, keeping as little contact as possible with the people who contracted his services. But tactical and political imperatives sometimes demanded partnerships. Almost always, he felt more endangered by the people he worked with than by the opposition, precisely because of the kind of chaos unfolding around him. Often, driven by the Beast or by his own judgment, he had eliminated his team members along with targets because they had provoked his inner demon, or simply to ensure his own survival. Lee, in his prime as good as any Max had ever witnessed, reminded Max of himself. Calm in the face of obstacles, he passed no judgments on assignments and never let personal preferences, agendas, or desires interfere with the work. He was consistent, a rock limited only by the frailty of his human body, and the darkness writhing in the crevices of his face. He trusted Lee more than anyone else involved in their kind of work.
Which did not prevent him from scanning the street one last time when he opened his eyes, got up from the car, and slowly walked to the driver’s-side door.
“He belongs to the twins,” Max said, at last answering Lee’s good-natured taunt.
“Looks like he died a happy man.”
“But I don’t think he was happy to die.”
“Still cleaning up after them?” Lee asked, trying the handle on his side of the car. It was locked. He gave Max a quizzical look, picked up on his counter surveillance routine, and joined Max in studying the vicinity.
The area still felt secure. Max let himself be drawn to the children play-fighting, dancing, showing each other moves learned from video games and TV wrestlers. He envied their boundless energy, the innocence cocooning the darkness within them. He had always had an abundance of the first, though during the past decade the Beast had provided him, through its madness and abandon, with more of the prowess he had taken for granted in his younger days.
Innocence was foreign to him. He had lived another kind of life when he was their age. Now, when the Beast was not pacing in the cage of his mind, he wondered what it would have been like to be innocent, to be as vulnerable, and as ignorant of vulnerability, as children, his targets, or his victims.
Max hesitated before opening his door, let his gaze linger on Lee. In contrast to the youngsters, he looked even older than Max remembered. The reality saddened Max. The darkness Lee harbored was wearing him out. The killing and torture and agony he had witnessed, the atrocities he had performed, clouded his eyes, haunted his expressions. Time itself, as if in punishment, had slowed him, dulled his senses, and sapped his strength. The shreds of his youthful innocence still ran through him, but instead of infusing him with vigor and charm, the vestiges of his early life served only to expose his fragility. He was no longer in his prime.
Max caught himself. Of course, time had worn him down, as well. The hard, fast current of years had run through them both, ripping youth and its blessings from their grasp. Time was part of the bond Max shared with Lee. With it had come the trust built on shared hunts and kills. The other part of the bond, for Max, was the piece of himself he saw in Lee, the man he might have been without the Beast. He saw that man on the other side of the Lincoln: weak, flawed, crippled by the conflict between needs and appetites.
The bond, he was certain, ran both ways. Lee also looked at him as the model of a man he might have been: a stronger man, if only his gifts and appetites were as terrible and voracious as Max’s, if only his human needs did not war with his dark nature. Not even Lee knew about the Beast. For Lee, Max’s strength, talents, and hungers were unusual, but mortal. Max understood that his image to Lee was a man who carried himself with the self-reliance of a pure predator. Max, and even the Beast, found cruel gratification in their role as the occasional companion Lee shared a kill with, admired, envied. Hated.
It was the Beast within him that separated Max from Lee, and from everyone else in the world except, perhaps, for the twins. The Beast filled Max with power, obliterating the desire, space, and interest to build stronger connections with his surroundings. Power protected him from time’s ravages, made him feel he belonged to something greater than the meat of his body. The Beast was the vision of order and meaning in his existence; the luck protecting him from the consequences of his acts, contracted and personal; the comfort, cold and savage, in the lonely midnight hours between his hunger’s satiation and the roaring, all-consuming madness of his appetite.
Pity for Lee and his thorn-tooth smile touched Max. He could never be what Max was. Their masters had chosen well by sending Lee with news of plan changes and foolish assignments. Another messenger might have had to answer to the Beast for the night’s deceptions.
The Beast stirred, a jealous companion disturbed by soft sympathy. Its howl sent a shiver through Max, and whetted cruelty’s keen edge. Max savored the advantage of his strange legacy. Sympathy evaporated. His mind turned back to Lee’s question. He gave Lee a slight smile, showing him more than thorns.
“They’re my nieces.” Max opened the driver’s-side door and got back inside. Best to keep moving, he decided, until he escaped the twisted prank of having to protect instead of kill. Even worse, guard a woman.
“Adopted nieces, Max,” Lee shouted through the car window. “Makes all the difference.” He tapped the glass. Max let him in. “Not to me.”
Lee gave Max a wink and a leer as he settled into the passenger seat. Over the years, Lee had witnessed Max and the Beast at play. Whether he watched for sadistic, masochistic, or other reasons, Max had never quite understood. But Lee always proved sensitive enough to his own frailties to know to never join in the game. And even though he
showed interest in the twins, Max made certain he saw the result of their lovemaking and understood they were a Beast of their own. For all of Lee’s talk, Max was sure his comrade knew he would not last ten minutes with the twins. If he pursued them on his own, Max could not, would not, save him. But the talking was cheap enough.
Lee checked the glove compartment for the secured .45 and clips, glanced at the mirrors and the dashboard deck with the readouts from the car’s anti-surveillance instruments. “To me, it would.”
Max glanced at him as he pulled out onto the Grand Concourse service road.
Lee waved a hand. “But you’re not me, I know. Fine. I’ll help you with the bodies, no problem, but let’s make it fast. We’re running late, and we can’t leave the pickup exposed too long. As a matter of fact, why don’t you let the Blood of Killers handle this crap? They worship you, and they love cleaning up this kind of shit.”
“I do my own sanitation. Just like I do my own killing. No guard duty.”
“I said that when I heard they picked you. He’s not the type, I said, unless you want her dead. But you see how it is.”
Stopped at a light, Max picked up the car phone. “This is impossible,” he said, punching in the number and securing the scrambled satellite signal.
“Yes,” said the unfamiliar male voice on the other end of the line.
“Mr. Johnson, or Mr. Tung,” Max said. Though the names were his own invention for his two main, anonymous contacts, the operator knew his identity through voice recognition and embedded signal codes. Calling up Max’s file, the operator could see which government representatives normally dealt with him.
“Who the hell are they?” Lee asked.
“They are not available at this time.”
“The men you call Mr. Happy and Mr. Smiley,” Max said to Lee, who rolled his eyes. The light changed. Max followed the traffic flow onto the Saw Mill River Parkway. He spoke into the phone: “Who is available?”
“I can handle your call.”
“Who are you?”
“The person handling your call.”
The Beast roused itself, bureaucratic insolence catching its interest. In Max’s mind, a young, clean-shaven clerk had his head smashed into a screen, a mouse jammed into his mouth, and a keyboard shoved up his ass. “Why am I on this job?”
Clicking keys followed a moment’s dead air. “As far as I can see, you aren’t. The rendezvous is south of your position, but you’re heading north.”
“Unavoidable business.”
“We are your business.”
The Beast roared. Max’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “Do you really know my business? Would you like to find out?”
Lee tapped his thigh. “Max …”
The voice on the line wavered. “You were not briefed.”
“Not for this.”
“Briefing you is not my job—”
“Puffing guard duty isn’t mine. I want to speak to someone in charge.”
“I—I’m sorry, sir, but there is no one available. And there is no time. You have an operative with you. Let him—”
“Did somebody forget who I am?” Max shouted. “What I do? Do you seriously expect me to carry this assignment out?” Max gunned the gas, weaved through the traffic. The Beast surged through his heart, chased blood through arteries until life’s flow burned under his skin.
“You are more than what we use you for,” the voice said, finding resolve as electronic beeps accentuated manic key tapping. “You are whatever we need you to be, for whatever we must use you for.” It was as if Mr. Johnson had gotten on the phone to admonish him. Max wondered if the operator had reached his normal contact through his computer terminal, and if Mr. Johnson was furiously scripting appropriate responses to the operator’s screen.
“None of this makes sense. How come I didn’t get to pick my team?”
“There is none. You’re solo. The way you like it.”
“You people aren’t even following your own security protocols. If this is a defensive operation, how can I work without a team?”
“There’s a bigger picture, Max. You’re used to a role, which you perform to an exceptional degree. But there’s a lot going on right now, and everybody has to pitch in.”
Max took a deep breath, curbed the Beast, brought the Lincoln down to the speed limit. He focused on the assignment flaws. “What am I supposed to do, not sleep? Who gets the food? Who patrols the perimeter? What if there’s an emergency with the target? Security breaches in the setup?”
“We didn’t think you slept.” Someone laughed in the background.
“Put Mr. Johnson on.”
“He’s not here.”
“Who’s coaching you?”
“Is that the problem you’re taking up satellite time to resolve?”
“What I want to resolve is an inappropriate allocation of resources. What I want to point out is that you’re sending a killer to protect a target, with no backup or planning or coordination. What I’m telling you is that I feel like you’re setting me up, and if you don’t tell your superior what the hell’s going on and get me off this assignment I’ll personally kill the fucking bitch you want me to protect, and then I’ll gut the bastards who were going to pick her up, and then I’ll send the bunch back to you through the mail in three-by-five envelopes. Postage fucking due.” He raised the phone to smash it against the dashboard. The Beast pushed him to sideswipe a passing car and send it crashing into the guardrail.
“Fucking clerks are taking over the world,” Lee muttered, looking out the passenger window. “No wonder it’s all going to hell.” He met Max’s gaze, winked. “Don’t let them bully you, Max. But don’t let them make you do something stupid, either.”
The voice on the line settled into a cool, professional tone. “We realize your briefing has been inadequate. However, we know you are flexible enough to adapt to new situations. In addition, you have not been left entirely without resources. The safe house is fully supplied and equipped with electronic security, and the area will be monitored by local agencies for unusual activity. We can divert local assets to you if an emergency arises. And, because of the unusual circumstances, we have just been authorized to convert your assigned safe house to Nowhere House status. That should satisfy all of your concerns. You will not need a team because you will not be found, and there is a low probability of engagement with opposition forces during transport to and from the safe house.”
A chill passed through Max. The Beast stopped short.
The Nowhere House was well beyond the wetwork world in which Max traveled. “Who is this woman? Who is after her?”
“It doesn’t matter who she is,” the voice said, toning down the strained formality of its speech. It was as if Max was communicating with several people at the same time, and he wondered if the man on the other end of the line was somehow channeling various officials and representatives assigned to deal with Max. Or perhaps he was simply mad. “The people after her are amateurs. It’s the people she’s going to who are important and require reassurance. They know you, even like you and your peculiar talent. They feel their property will be safe in your hands. More important, your presence raises her value. Getting the best to escort her is a sign of her importance, a badge of honor.”
The Beast recovered from its momentary surprise and resumed pressuring Max to kill. “I can’t do this.”
“What’s so hard?”
“I’ve never done what you’re asking. I’ve never had to protect anyone except myself.” And the twins, he thought. But they were different. They meant something to him.
“You’re an assassin, you know how you would kill her. Anticipate. Though, as I said, it’s almost certain you won’t see action.”
“So I’m wasting my time. The hell with this. You do it.”
“If you don’t pick up this assignment, you will die.”
“You’d terminate our contract over this woman?”
“She is part of a plan.
So are you. Changes require consequences. Reparations. Adjustments. Your defiance can serve the plan and sustain the value of what is being done, but only if you are punished.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Why not? Would you dare betray us?”
Max strained to contain the Beast. He wiped the sweat beading on his forehead. The hand holding the phone shook slightly. “She must be a hell of a woman.”
“What is your mission status?”
Max grunted as if struck in the gut. “Operational.”
“Check your contact for time limitations.”
Before Max could reply, the connection was severed. He put the phone back in its cradle.
“Nice job of pulling a briefing out of those assholes,” Lee said.
“Thanks,” Max said, with more of the Beast’s grumble than his own voice.
“So I guess you’re not going to tell me shit, either.”
“They said I had to check with you about time limitations.”
“Let me make a call. Maybe we can buy some wiggle room.” Lee took the phone, punched in numbers, spoke in low tones, listened, glanced at Max, cocked an eyebrow, checked his watch, hung up. “Damn. I was hoping to sneak over to City Island and pick up crab legs to go before my next drop. But I really do have to get this Fordham divinity student out of the city before the papal meat boys cut off a few of his heretical parts. Looks like my dinner goes the way of your passengers in the trunk. We’re cleared to delay your pickup, but I hope you’re not thinking of digging really deep graves.”
“No digging.”
Lee waited a moment, studying Max as if to gauge his mood, then pressed on. “Goddamn awesome rating a Nowhere House deployment, though. Better write down anything you want to remember that happened to you over the past forty-eight hours.”
“I thought it was twelve.”
“You believe government specs? I hung out for a weekend with a team one time before they went inside. Saw them a week later during a Tibetan incursion and they took a shot at me.”
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